Field of the Invention and Related Art Statements
The present invention relates to a display apparatus comprising a plurality of display units having display screens over which a position indicating mark can be displayed.
There has been known a display apparatus comprising a plurality of display units having display screens. For instance in, a medical image filing system, there are provided two display units, one for displaying various kinds of medical picture images such as X-ray images, CT-images, ultrasonic images, NMR images and endoscopic images, and the other for displaying various kinds of attribute data relating to picture images such as patient name, doctor name, imaged part of body, imaging date and diagnosed result.
In the display apparatus mentioned above, in order to denote or enter coordinates of a particular position or area of a displayed image, there are provided a plurality of coordinate input units for a plurality of display units. In such an apparatus, a position indicating mark, i.e. cursor, is displayed on a display screen of a respective display unit. The cursor can be moved at will on a respective display unit with the aid of a respective coordinate input unit, and after the cursor has been moved into a desired position, when a switch provided in the coordinate input unit is actuated, coordinates of the relevant position are generated and entered in a signal processing unit.
Further, it has been also known to provide a single coordinate input unit and a switching unit for selecting a display screen on which a cursor is to be displayed. By manually operating the switching unit, it is possible to enter coordinates of a desired position on a desired display screen.
In the above explained display apparatuses, the coordinate input unit may be formed by an absolute coordinate input device such as tablet, touchpanel or light-pen or by a relative coordinate input device such as track-ball, mouse or digitizer.
In the case of providing a plurality of coordinate input units, a whole system becomes large in size and expensive in cost. Further, since an operator has to handle a plurality of coordinate input units selectively, the operation becomes quite cumbersome.
In the case of using the single coordinate input unit, since the operator is required to handle the switching unit manually for denoting a desired display unit on which the position indicating mark is to be displayed, the operation is still cumbersome.
In the above mentioned medical image filing system, for the sake of a simple retrieval, a plurality of reduced picture images and their attribute data are grouped into a picture image list and an attribute data list, respectively and these lists are displayed on the respective display screens as menu images. After any desired picture image has been denoted by moving the cursor into a position related to said picture image, coordinates of the relevant position are entered into the signal processing unit to select a full size picture image corresponding to the selected picture image and the selected full size picture image instead of the picture image list is displayed on the display screen.
FIG. 1 is a schematic view showing the known medical image filing system including first CRT monitor 1, second CRT monitor 2, mouse 3 for inputting coordinates of a position indicating mark, i.e. cursor 4, and a signal processing unit 5 connected to the monitors 1, 2 and mouse 3. As shown in FIG. 1, on the CRT monitor 1, there is displayed a list of attribute data relating to a plurality of picture images included in a picture image list which is displayed on the second CRT monitor 2. The cursor 4 is displayed only on the first CRT monitor 1 and can be moved on a display screen of this CRT monitor 1 by moving the mouse 3 on a table not shown. The operator looks at the displayed images on the CRT monitors 1 and 2 and determines a picture image to be displayed on the second CRT monitor 2 at an enlarged scale. Then the operator moves the mouse 3 to bring the cursor 4 to a display area on which the attribute data belonging to said selected picture image is displayed and pushes a switch on the mouse 3. Then the signal processing unit 5 detects a coordinate-position of the cursor 4 on the screen of the CRT monitor 1 to detect the picture image which has been selected by the operator. Then a picture image signal relating to the selected picture image is read out of a picture image file provided in the signal processing unit 5 and the relevant picture image of full scale is displayed on the second CRT monitor 2. At the same time, the attribute data list is also replaced by new detailed attribute data belonging to the relevant picture image.
FIG. 2 is a schematic view illustrating another known medical image filing system which comprises a keyboard 6 instead of the mouse for entering the coordinate-position. By operating a ten-key 7 provided on the keyboard 6, it is possible to select one of a plurality of reduced picture images simultaneously displayed on the CRT monitor 2 whose attribute data list is also displayed on the first CRT monitor 1. Then a selected full scale picture image and its detailed attribute data are displayed on the CRT monitors 2 and 1, respectively.
As explained above, in the known image filing system, the operator can enter a coordinate-position for the image retrieval only from the attribute data displaying CRT monitor 1, and this is sometimes inconvenient and thus the known system can not provide a versatile user interface. As explained above, it may be possible to indicate particular picture image and its attribute data from any of the two CRT monitors, if the cursor 4 may be selectively displayed on a selected monitor. However, in such a case, the operation becomes cumbersome. Moreover, such a system could not be used when the number of picture images contained in a list, i.e. menu image, is changed.
Due to the recent progress in imaging devices, the resolution of the image has improved. In such a case, it is desirable to display the picture images on the CRT screen having a large screen area and a high resolution, whereas the attribute data composed of characters is sufficient to be displayed on a usual CRT monitor. Because, display ranges of CRT monitors are different from one another, it is impossible to move the cursor in a similar manner on these monitors. For instance, there might be produced an area in which the cursor could not be moved.